I remember some years ago learning a difficult but beautiful lesson about life. I was invited to attend a meeting of recovering drug addicts who were parents. They were working on a book together. This was a way of telling their stories.
I am a firm believer in the healing and transformative power of stories. Their stories certainly transformed me.
They described the ways in which they had taken drugs in front of their young children, and the pain they felt they had inflicted on their children and themselves. They told of how they went about making enough money to survive, to feed their children and support their habits. Some of the women described the difficulties of balancing work and family while working in the sex industry.
The words that have remained with me the most are those of a young Aboriginal woman, who described her experiences of homelessness and frequent incarceration based on racial discrimination. When, naively, I asked her what it was like to be locked up and whether at least she was able to sleep, she told me, quietly but firmly:
'The cells are a sad place, brother. You don't get to sleep in the cells.'
The lesson I learned was contained in the one word in the middle of this woman's deeply poetic utterance: the word 'brother'. She bestowed this title on me through no merit of my own. I did nothing to prove any kinship with her. Nor could I claim to know what her experiences were like.
When she called me brother she did something very powerful. She took me into the cells with her. She showed me how sad they were. Her life was no longer alien to mine. She belonged to the same world as me. I belonged to her world, a world where her sadness was the sadness of the world.
The Vinnies CEO Sleepout, which takes place this Thursday 16 June, is all about trying to learn a little and share a little about the world of homelessness in a wealthy country. Whether we like it or not, we are all, in reality, part of that world.
The CEO Sleepout is not just about raising money. It's about changing minds and hearts. It's about changing negative attitudes to people doing it tough; people who are usually demonised but who, I believe, should be deeply respected and admired for their tenacity and inventiveness.
Our problem in Australia is not the